Book presentation "The Art Of Racing In The Rain" by Garth Stein (Extract)

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...The door opens, and I hear him with his familiar cry, “Yo,Zo!” Usually, I can’t help but put aside my pain and hoist myself to my feet, wag my tail, sling my tongue around, and shove my face into his crotch. It takes humanlike willpower to hold back on this particular occasion, but I do. I hold back. I don’t get up. I’m acting. “Enzo?” I hear his footsteps, the concern in his voice. He finds me and looks down. I lift my head, wag my tail feebly so it taps against the floor. I play the part. He shakes his head and runs his hand through his hair, sets down the plastic bag from the grocery that has his dinner in it. I can smell roast chicken through the plastic. Tonight he’s having roast chicken and an iceberg lettuce salad. “Oh, Enz,” he says. He reaches down to me, crouches, touches my head like he does, along the crease behind the ear, and I lift my head and lick at his forearm. “What happened, kid?” he asks. Gestures can’t explain. “Can you get up?” I try, and I scramble. My heart takes off, lunges ahead because no, I can’t. I panic. I thought I was just acting, but I really can’t get up. Shit. Life imitating art. “Take it easy, kid,” he says, pressing down on my chest to calm me. “I’ve got you.” He lifts me easily, he cradles me, and I can smell the day on him. I can smell everything he’s done. His work, the auto shop where he’s behind the counter all day, standing,making nice with the customers who yell at him because their BMWs don’t work right and it costs too much to fix them and that makes them mad so they have to yell at someone. I can smell his lunch. He went to the Indian buffet he likes. All you can eat. It’s cheap, and sometimes he takes a container with him and steals extra portions of the tandoori chicken and yellow rice and has it for dinner, too. I can smell beer. He stopped somewhere. The Mexican restaurant up the hill. I can smell the tortilla chips on his breath. Now it makes sense. Usually, I’m excellent with elapsed time, but I wasn’t paying attention because of my emoting. He places me gently in the tub and turns on the handheld shower thing and says, “Easy, Enz.” He says, “Sorry I was late. I should have come straight home, but the guys from work insisted. I told Craig I was quitting, and…” He trails off, and I realize that he thinks that my accident was because he was late. Oh, no. That’s not how it was meant. It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretation and they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult. I didn’t want him to feel bad about this. I wanted him to see the obvious, that it’s okay...